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Mike's Minute: Another Minister out of their depth

Author
Newstalk ZB ,
Publish Date
Tue, 27 Apr 2021, 10:16AM

Mike's Minute: Another Minister out of their depth

Author
Newstalk ZB ,
Publish Date
Tue, 27 Apr 2021, 10:16AM

Didn’t Nanaia Mahuta's speech last week reek of a person several fathoms out of her depth?

We are part of the Five Eyes, but we are now dictating what sort of thing Five Eyes should do and humanitarian issues don’t appear to be one of them.

"What?" said Australia who were, to quote one of the many headlines, "completely blindsided."

Top tip in the world of high-powered foreign relations, don’t freak your mates out, give your mates a heads up. You don’t always have to be in lock step, but don't say weird stuff they're not expecting.

The Brits took even greater exception. They dragged the woke Prime Minister into it by, quite correctly, pointing out you can't on one hand opine about the Uighurs, and on the other, as they put it, suck up to China.

It was sadly another very good example of how this government operates.  Say stuff that isn't thought through, and then once you’ve said it and it's all raining down on you, pretend it's something different to what you said.

Not dissimilar to the Ihumātao deal. Turns out it's unlawful. Their own Auditor General pinged them. But in the spin was the "it's only a technicality” bollocks. If talking your way out of trouble was policy, we'd be inundated.

But back to the real world in which we increasingly operate.  China today, is not the China of old. China has a confidence and boldness to them that has a lot of people quite rightly exercised.

The world is a fractured place and that’s only going to get worse, and we are stuck in the middle. We need china more than China needs us. We are in a $20 billion relationship with China. They own us.

Meanwhile Australia, who take a different world view, asked for a report into the origins of Covid, they’ve ripped up Daniel Andrew's Belt and Road policy, and have generally taken the fight to the Chinese who have responded thus far by costing Australia about $20 billion worth of business.

The reality of all this is kind of simple. The world is made up of alliances and the one we are in has countries like Australia, the US, the UK and Canada in it.

They are increasingly wary of the Chinese. Also, of places like Russia, but Russia matters less.

Our issue is how stuck we are. And walking this particularly tricky tight rope is a bunch of amateurs, who don't hold a position of any clarity and most likely haven't even thought much about it.

The Mahuta speech and its astonishing stance and resulting reaction tell you that.

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